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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22698172">the eight with a curse.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/arurun/pseuds/arurun'>arurun</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>not so human after all. [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Digimon Adventure</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Gen, Japanese names, Mythical Beings &amp; Creatures</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 11:08:17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,267</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22698172</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/arurun/pseuds/arurun</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The first thing Taichi does upon landing in the Digital World is reach behind himself, grab his tail out of the air, and shove it back in his pants. </p><p>Koushirou starts muttering, and a pair of wolf ears just literally sprout from his head. Sora goes for a swim one night and scares the living daylights out of the boys. Yamato bathes in boiling hot water like an emperor, and Takeru is still pestering Piyomon because he wants to learn how to fly.</p><p>In which the humans aren't quite human, and the Digimon are just confused.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>not so human after all. [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1634437</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>130</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>My take on a supernatural twist AU. Not sure why this came around in the first place-- hope it's worth reading at least, thanks for picking this up!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>When the Digimon first met their partners, they were surprised.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Humans, as they’ve heard from legends, and stories, were flesh-coated beings with no horns, no tails, no wings. They don’t evolve like digimon, so they wear additional shells made of steel and iron, to stand up to anyone stronger.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the humans appeared in File Island, they didn’t have any armor. Instead, they had hide made of cloth, silk, and leather, and no weapons to defend themselves.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And most surprising of all, they didn’t need to.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Because strangely enough, these humans had horns, tails, and wings.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>-</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s hard to tell when anyone noticed.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When they first came here, they were too baffled and confused, too bewildered in the mess of the situation. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They had better things to worry about-- so what if Taichi is desperately shoving his tail in his pants, or Koushirou grows another pair of ears when he’s thinking too hard, and Mimi talks to trees? They needed to understand their situation and, as Jou kept emphasizing, find the adults. Everything else could come later.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Mimi doesn’t find her Digimon weird at first. Apparently, plants talk all the time… then she realizes that it was in fact, speaking in English, and she freaks out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jou-- cowardly, very rational Jou-- sees Kabuterimon from a mile away, and his first reaction is to wave frantically and yell “wait! We can explain! Calm down!” at it. It doesn’t work.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yamato stands firm instead of running, actually staring the Digimon down in an attempt to assert dominance or something. He’s dragged away as they start running.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Koushirou had been mostly unresponsive, spending most of his time recalibrating his information systems, recategorizing data. It all takes a while to sink in, but he understands the situation most.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sora didn't find her Digimon too strange either. She tells them that she's seen similar things around, though it's undeniably the first time one has willingly talked to her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Takeru, younger and adorable as he was, was more interested in how cute they were than how abnormal they seemed. He was too young to understand the significance of the difference between a Tokomon and a normal animal.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Then they fall off a mountain and Taichi lands perfectly on his hands and feet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And for some reason, </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span>, of all things, sets everyone off. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>-</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Dude did you </span>
  <em>
    <span>see</span>
  </em>
  <span> that!" Koushirou even snaps out of his blank stupor to exclaim at him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s so not fair! You get to land on your feet while all of us have aches all over!” Mimi whines, sprawled on the ground, “I think my arm is bruised!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do it again!” Takeru hops at him, tugging at his shirt in excitement, “hey, do it again!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No--” Yamato looks positively concerned. He had grasped Takeru tight to shield the younger boy from injuries, after all-- “he landed straight on his feet. That’s gotta hurt.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jou shivers, “you’ll hurt your bones if you don’t distribute your weight when you land…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Taichi looks fine, though?” Sora points out.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The boy in question stands up, looking like he’d just been caught in the world’s most annoying situation possible. The Digimon just look confused at this point-- are humans not supposed to do that?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Seated comfortably on a raft of Gomamon’s fishes, they huddled around.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s uh--” Taichi looks away when all eyes are on him, “I just have good reflexes, okay? I’m in the soccer team, after all--”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“His tail is wagging! It’s swaying about! Cats do that when they’re nervous, right?” Takeru coos, hopping closer.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>At that, the tail stiffened, going shock straight. Taichi shoots back, grabs it out of the air, and hugs it close with a flushed expression. “You uh-- didn’t see anything!” Splendid excuse, “this is uh-- a toy! Wait no that sounds wrong! It’s not a--”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At that, everyone laughs. Except Taichi, who fumbles in a flustered panic trying to claim it wasn’t anything inappropriate just to save his manly ego.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“So basically, like that?” Sora asks, jutting a thumb in Koushirou’s direction.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Koushirou was tapping away furiously at his laptop, full attention to the coding on the PC. On top of his head, a pair of red dog ears twitch every now and then, straightening when he found something interesting and flattening as he hit a block.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uhh,” Taichi takes off his goggles and a pair of cat ears unfurled from under them, “yeah. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Exactly</span>
  </em>
  <span> like that.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Nods passed like a wave through the group, and understanding echoed in a strange normality between them. Back in the real world, there would be people shouting profanities somewhere, and the other half would probably call them weebs or chuunis or something. Or furries, whichever.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jou wonders if he should mention that this group should be, well, </span>
  <em>
    <span>more surprised</span>
  </em>
  <span> by the fact that their schoolmate is a literal </span>
  <em>
    <span>cat</span>
  </em>
  <span> human, but he isn’t sure how to mention it without sounding like a hypocrite. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“So it isn’t just me?” Jou pipes up, “everyone sees them, right? </span>
  <em>
    <span>Right</span>
  </em>
  <span>?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wonder if Koushirou has a tail too,” Mimi wonders out loud, “another cat tail?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Those ears are more like dog ears,” Yamato leans closer to the boy, who still doesn’t notice a thing, “maybe a dog tail… or a wolf?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Can he turn fluffy?!” Takeru sounded oddly ecstatic about the aspect.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You can hug Gabumon if you want, you know.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>-</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>After that, they gathered around and had a nice, long talk about the ears. Koushirou </span>
  <em>
    <span>does</span>
  </em>
  <span> in fact have a tail, and it’s very fluffy. After a long cuddle session, everyone is banned from coming within five paces of it, for the sake of Koushirou’s sanity.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Their attempts at explaining to the Digimon how they weren’t quite human just made everything confusing, so they decided to just go with the well-we’re-pretty-similar concept and just lived out the rest of the time pretending that was just how it was.</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jou would take off his glasses, and his irises would blot into webs, crossing black into his sclera as he gazes into a distance far beyond.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There’s a very big sea dinosaur thing,” he tells everyone the moment they approach the lake. “Correction, a large serpentine dragon thing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yellow skull, blue body, red tail?” Koushirou asks, eyes and hands not leaving the laptop. When Jou nods, he says, “that’s a Seadramon.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“How do you even know--”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I thought this was our first time in the Digital World, Koushirou.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You even know the </span>
  <em>
    <span>name</span>
  </em>
  <span>?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Koushirou leans over the surface of the lake, takes off his glove, and threads a hand through the water.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s an </span>
  <em>
    <span>Information Wolf</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Koushirou later tells them, though the name only means anything to Jou. Even Sora had never heard of them-- and Sora knew a </span>
  <em>
    <span>lot</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m good at detecting things in smells, tastes, and I have a good sense of touch too,” Koushirou explains, “kinda like a police dog, but with more programming in and out of my head… which is why I always need my computer with me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The screen’s black, though.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, it hasn’t been working for a while. I don’t actually need the computer, though. I can kind of do the organizing and coding straight in my head. Typing just helps me focus.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The heck?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“So Jou has bug eyes, and Koushirou is a dog?” Taichi aks, incredulous, “why is the ladybug Digimon with Koushirou instead of Jou?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s a ladybug?” all the Digimon pipe up at the same time Tentomon asks, “me?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Well I mean,” Yamato casts a look at Gabumon, “you don’t see me having a dragon Digimon. I guess our partners don’t really correspond to what we are.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A pause.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re a </span>
  <em>
    <span>what</span>
  </em>
  <span>?!”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>hi guys! I'm glad there are people actually enjoying this xD this was just a random plot bunny, so it might not get much updates, but I'll at least get through what all of them are before I go pop off into disappearance. enjoy!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Yamato should’ve noticed when Sora was gone in the middle of the night.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He isn’t the type to ask where a girl could have gone at this hour-- maybe she went for a walk because she couldn’t sleep, or she went for a washroom visit, it just seemed inappropriate to ask. She’s old enough to take care of herself, anyways.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then they see the mermaid.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yamato doesn’t know much about them, but Taichi straight up </span>
  <em>
    <span>freaks</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In his lore, mermaids drag men into the sea and, after they drown, eat them. They especially dislike Cait Siths like Taichi himself, because although cats and fish are predator and prey, it’s the other way around for their half-human mythological counterparts.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yamato just goes along with the panic as they scream, ditch Agumon and Gabumon in the confusion, and rushes to land with an arm on each other’s. Life over argument right now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All in all, Sora surfaces to two shrieking boys and she is </span>
  <em>
    <span>offended</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Who looks at a girl’s face and starts begging for their life?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Everyone wakes up after the commotion, amazed by the shimmering tail that leads from Sora’s bottom half. Her top half wasn’t fully human, either. Webbed wings sprouted from her back, leading down to slimy skin patches and glistening orange scales.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’d taken off her shirt, but kept on her training bra (which looked like a short tank top so although the boys were flustered at first, they got used to it) as she swam. She performs tricks with the fishes, leaping into the air and drawing arcs.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taichi is still mildly scared of mermaids (</span>
  <em>
    <span>I am a Melusine, there’s a difference</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Sora corrects) but Sora’s fine, he guessed.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>-</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Mimi takes off her hat. Palmon seemed to need it more than her, so she pushes it on the Digimon’s head.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That’s when everyone notices it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mimi and Palmon have a lot more in common than first meets the eye. Under her hat, sprouting in a mix of hair, were vines and flowers curling across her temple and forming a natural flower crown of lilies on her head.</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Her head’s a field of flowers,” Koushirou says the first thing that comes to his mind.</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taichi chokes back a laugh, and Sora reprimands Koushirou for the mildly offending joke. Takeru asks what it means, and Yamato straight up tells him it means she’s an airhead. Which leaves Jou to the aftermath of trying to assure a tearful Mimi and Palmon that no, they’re not dumb, Koushirou is just being mean.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When they leave the forest, Mimi is devastated. She feels most comfortable among the greenery, being a spirit of the forest. Unlike the rest, she wasn’t born a supernatural. She lives off two amber stones embedded in her wrists, morphing her into something short of a plant herself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her skin dries easily, her veins are purple, and poisons are a delicacy to her. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She talks to the trees and makes sure they don’t end up walking in circles for hours, always making sure they got the most efficient route around-- though, they aren’t sure where exactly they’re headed in the first place.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And according to Jou, she’s apparently made friends with every tree, giving them names.</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>-</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Takeru takes off his vest, then throws off his undershirt too. Yamato leaps to catch it before it hits the ground and gets soiled.</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Wait, Takeru--”</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They’ve defeated Meramon, driven out the black gear. But Takeru is headed straight for Birdramon instead, leaping onto its fiery wings and cheering with joy.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s a phoenix! Look, Onii-chan!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Takeru’s arms are lined with feathers, and on his back, still-too-small wings stretch out for fresh air. The general response is woahs and gapes, ranging from honestly flabbergasted to ecstatic adoration at the sight.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Wait, Takeru, it’s dangerous!” Taichi yells out, “you’ll get burned-- wait, huh?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yamato has a palm on his face as he sets a hand on Taichi’s shoulder. “No, it’s fine,” he sighs, “he’s burn resistant.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Birdramon humours him, letting the boy hike up to its back and then taking him for a short flight high and around before de-digivolving. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>After that, Takeru starts taking flight lessons from Piyomon, Patamon, and Tentomon. It doesn’t quite help, because Takeru’s wings are underdeveloped and still too young, but it keeps him occupied and the effort is endearing to watch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right,” Taichi tucks his hands onto his hips, turning to the others. “Anyone got any more important details to share before we all get mini heart attacks like that again?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>-</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They enter the Power Supply Closet in Andromon’s factory, and Koushirou just stops.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His eyes are locked on the sights, taking in, taking in, taking in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They find an entrance at the side of the huge battery, and once Koushrou finds his way in, he sprawls on the ground, gloves peeled off, hands on the floor-- and he stilled.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“A program? Languages? They're in the battery so it’s a power source. There's no component to make up an actual battery. There’s no chemistry or physics in this. Or is it a hologram like that tree in the forest? Is electricity a thing here? Is everything powered by programs? Why would a program--”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Uhm… Koushirou?” Yamato speaks up, but his voice goes unheard.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He’s kinda scary,” Takeru clings to his brother, “he’s just muttering away like he did when we first came here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jou said that means he’s gathering information,” Mimi assures, but she does take a step back from the over-absorbed wolf. </span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Koushirou’s ears are out, his tail’s movements are rhythmical, like a loading screen animation. He just mutters and mutters and mutters, eyes never leaving the floor.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Would you stay with him, Tentomon?” Yamato turns to the beetle Digimon, “it’s not good to let him take in too much, he’ll overheat or something</span>
  <em>
    <span>, </span>
  </em>
  <span>so knock him in the side of the head after about uh, two more minutes. Can you do that for me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course!” Tentomon chirps, “you guys go n’ explore the rest of the factory. Leave Koushirou-han ta’me!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s a little after that when Koushirou suffers, because the information he’d gathered was so, so deep, he had to decode</span>
  <em>
    <span> himself </span>
  </em>
  <span>to get the bare minimums out in a language they even knew.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Cait Siths are individualistic and prefer to be independent. Being black cats, they tend to be avoided as a harbinger of bad luck. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Taichi, though, is an anomaly.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s like he’s desperate to break past that barrier,” Sora tells them-- “he’s the most sociable person you’d ever find. He’s trying to overcome that stigma of bad luck by desperately proving them wrong where they can’t see his ears. It’s out of pure, petty spite, but that part of him is rather charming, don’t you think?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taichi hides his ears and his tail all the time, even after everyone’s found out about each other. It’s evident he dislikes his own feline features.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then one day, Takeru wakes up at the break of dawn to find Taichi, asleep, in his full kitten form. He goes entirely rabid over a fluffy cat in their midst, desperately hugging it like a plushie and raving over how adorable it was.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Later, Jou had to slowly, gently, coax Taichi out of a tree, but at least the boy is more comfortable in his other form after that.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>-</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Mimi is immune to poisons and has a natural efficiency to detect poisons in her surroundings-- but that also meant that she was very sensitive to poisons.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And the sewers, those were definitely poison, at least in her standards. And the Numemon? Her instincts say it’s fertiliser but her brain says </span>
  <em>
    <span>hell</span>
  </em>
  <span> no.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s disgusting!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean, it is, but--”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Seems like even trees could be picky eaters when it came to nutrients. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Toy Town was another adventure and a half. Mimi is isolated in the strange situation, stuck confused and lost and-- where are the trees? You’re telling me this town has no trees?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Mimi </span>
  <em>
    <span>loses </span>
  </em>
  <span>it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What beautiful city has no trees?! It’s the hallmark of mother nature! I don’t trust a man that doesn’t even have a weed in his garden!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even after they drove the Black Gear out, Monzaemon was in for one hell of a lecture.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>-</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>If there’s anyone that hates his mythical counterpart more than Taichi, it’s probably Yamato. In fact, the others never really find out what he is until Takeru’s basket of eggs spilled into the too-hot spring and Takeru, in a panicked flush, leaps right in after it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Because, a shocked second later, Yamato jumps in after his brother. Everyone else, especially Mimi and Gabumon, </span>
  <em>
    <span>screech</span>
  </em>
  <span> in utter horror. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That water could literally fry an egg! </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A moment later, the two resurface. Seems the spring was just shallow enough for Yamato to stand in, but Takeru had to be lifted out by the scruff.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Takeru’s perfectly fine and normal, clutching his fallen eggs like a desperate puppy and not understanding why Yamato is angry at him for jumping in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yamato, though, rises out of the water covered in thick red scales.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His shirt is sleeveless, so it’s all in clear view. From somewhere at his shoulders and down into his elbows, his skin glowed bright and hot, like the thick hide of a fire dragon. They shone against the light like metal, and though one hand remained human-- that’s the hand holding Takeru-- his other was a five-fingered dragon claw, adorned with full black nails.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Needless to say, everyone hid behind Taichi and Sora at the sight. Even Koushirou, because pure animal instinct was to run from an angry dragon, and there, that’s a </span>
  <em>
    <span>very</span>
  </em>
  <span> angry dragon. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yamato starts scolding the child for being much too impulsive-- right on cue, Takeru whines about his clothes being wet now and Yamato returns with </span>
  <em>
    <span>I told you so</span>
  </em>
  <span>-- then the bickering continues on a tangent.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a strange sight.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Takeru is a phoenix, so he’s not affected by heat,” Koushirou explains helpfully, “and uh, I’m guessing Yamato only turns into a dragon when the conditions go beyond a certain temperature...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wait, so we panicked for nothing?!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Goodness </span>
  <em>
    <span>tell </span>
  </em>
  <span>us things like that beforehand--”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>(After this, Taichi sat everyone down and demanded they tell each other </span>
  <em>
    <span>everything</span>
  </em>
  <span> before Jou died from a heart attack one day.)</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>-</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jou is probably the strangest of the lot.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Taichi jokingly refers to him as a wimpy beetle, but that isn’t far from the truth. Sensory Beetles were made not to be strong, they were made to be perishable, useful in hordes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So on his own, Jou is sort of useless. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“There’s a tear in Takeru’s coat. Sora, could you help with that?” Jou tells the crowd one night, “and Mimi, we passed by a cotton tree twenty meters back, is it possible for you to weave a few new clothes for us? So we don’t have to keep wearing these ones.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Sort of.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“There’s a flock of digimon in that direction, and a few more in the trees, but they’re not too interested in us, so as long as we keep watch at night, we should be fine,” he alternates between pointing and ranting every few moments, “and, uh, Takeru, no, don’t sleep there, it’ll be uncomfortable.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In everyone’s opinion, if they had to spend another night with all this strangely specific nagging they might just spontaneously combust.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s hard to imagine what exactly Jou is seeing. Even Koushirou can’t see it, and seeing as they’re from the same lore, that means a lot.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If Koushirou could </span>
  <em>
    <span>learn</span>
  </em>
  <span> anything, Jou could </span>
  <em>
    <span>see</span>
  </em>
  <span> everything. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But there was just one thing neither of them, nor anyone else, could see well-- and that would be the mystery of the Digimon of this world, as well as their powers, their skills, and exactly </span>
  <em>
    <span>what</span>
  </em>
  <span> they are to begin with.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So when they were brought into Devimon’s illusions, deceived, and separated, there was nothing they could do but regret their negligence. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
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